What It Means To Be Civilized
As part of this month’s CDL homework, I’ve been reading selections from “Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories and Reflections of Politics, Race, Culture and Spiritual Practice“, by Charles Johnson (pictured above, who will be a guest speaker at our next training retreat in September).
Here’s a passage that strikes me as particularly important–and timely–even though (maybe especially because) it was written more than 10 years ago:
“….At stake in the Martin Luther King, Jr. story are not only questions about American race relations but also deeper issues, older conundrums about what it means to be civilized in the political and social world, about how one confronts social evil without creating evil, division, and enmity, even questions about what Buddhists call pattica samuppada (Dependent Origination) that resonate beneath the surface of King’s remarkable and too-brief thirty-nine years of life.
“Clearly these are matters of urgency–especially the demand for civility–when in our spiritually bankrupt world awash in pop-culture vulgarity and terrorist acts…our leaders during the last presidential campaign [2004], on both the left and the right, shamelessly employed in their desire to ‘win’ such tactics as mudslinging and character assassination. (Prescient, King once stated, ‘We shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect,’ and also counseled, ‘We must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle.’)
“Would that today’s arrogant, ankle-biting and so often shortsighted politicians, with their red-meat rhetoric, might remember what King told Freedom Riders in 1960: ‘Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.'”
There Is a Moment
The Decision
by Jane Hirshfield
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.
The thorax or an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weights more.
Yet something slips through it–
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.
When It Feels Like There’s Nothing There
In the same talk I wrote about in Monday’s post, Ajahn Sucitto gives a very interesting answer to someone asking for more instructions on “detecting somatic experiences,” saying that there seem to be many “numb places” in this person’s body, and that “presumably it isn’t that the body doesn’t feel them but that it’s something to do with the mind’s inability to receive the messages.”
Sucitto responds:
“Well, the message there is: numb. That’s a message of a kind….
“It can be that the mind just isn’t tuned in enough, doesn’t pick up the signals. In which case you can begin to sensitize it by noticing things such as sensations in the hands, or a sense of warmth in the overall body….
“The energies of the emotions and the energies of the body are intertwined, so where there’s strong emotional affliction, there tends to be a certain somatic effect. Constriction, for example. Just as when somebody screams at you, you tighten up. You don’t decided to do. Your body just does it. As a defense. There can be many events like that. Most people tend to have had those kinds of experiences.
“It can also be a safety system, where you don’t feel anything because it’s too uncomfortable to feel it. Or it can be something to do with resignation, like: It’s not going to happen for me, so I just won’t bother and then something closes down, something freezes up. You go numb because the good, the warm, the friendly, the loving, isn’t going to happen, so your mind says: Just put up with it. Then something closes down. And there’s a sense of loss…
“Some numbness can be just that your mind isn’t acute enough. Some can be because of things that happened. And some can be because of things that didn’t happen.
“Mostly those things that did happen cause something more like tightness or tension or constriction. Whereas things that didn’t happen tend to cause numbness. You didn’t get the warmth or the support, so your mind just goes: Oh well…. It gives up, then it closes down. Or you didn’t get heard, or something, so you closed down. If this gets repeated enough and it becomes a pattern…then something closes.
“If you feel a numb place in your body, turn your attention to a place where you’re not so numb. Maybe your feet…or try to feel the whole of your body as much as you can…. At any rate, you widen your field of attention until you’ve got some reference…
“You find a place out of the afflicted area. And from there you let your mind rest in that which feels alive. And then from there you can welcome the numb place, turn your kind attention to it. Perhaps sweep from the safe place through the place of affliction…moving the attention gently, like stroking…and then moving…and breathing…though all of it.”
***
The above has been edited. Here’s a link to the full talk (53 minutes). He reads the question about numbness at around 10 minutes before the end.
Into a New Way
“I cannot think myself into a new way of living. I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.”
— Claude AnShin Thomas
Why Ask Why
Here
by Gary Snyder
In the dark
(The new moon long set)
A soft grumble in the breeze
Is the sound of a jet so high
It’s already long gone by
Some planet
Rising from the east shines
Through the trees
It’s been years since I thought,
Why are we here?
25 Words or Less
I listened to another one of Ajahn Sucitto’s dharma talks last night…this one basically a Q&A session…in which he was asked to explain meditation practice in 25 words or less.
Here’s what he said: “Meditation means cultivation of mind, by which we mean purifying the mind of harmful actions, afflictive mental states and ignorance. That’s the aim of it.” (Well done.)
Then (in way more than 25 words) he went on to explain the difference between samatha practice (the calming, collecting, steadying practice that utilizes a single object of mediation) and vipassana practice (insight meditation, which adds the element of investigation into conditionality as a part of the practice).
And he talked about how these practices are connected. His instructions are to find something (body sensation, mantra, image, etc) that you can pour your attention into and then just stay, stay, stay with that. “It could be breathing in and breathing out, which is actually something moving, but you stay in the presence of that so your mind finds a bit of stability there….You just stay, stay, stay…the moving stuff can just pass through. Stay, stay, stay. Don’t change your frame of reference. The frame of reference is called mindfulness. Sustaining that frame is the right kind of energy or effort. This is samatha practice.
“Insight (vipassana) practice is any process that involves some degrees of asking ‘what causes this’ or ‘what is the conditioning for the arising of that’ or ‘what brings this to mind; what does it do; how does it pass; who does it belong to….
“So generally, you want to have enough samatha so it’s like a ‘white board’ there where you can begin to register the ‘scribbles’ of your life that run across it. That’s mediation.
“Then, at a certain point a shift happens. Something steps back, something opens up. So instead of the mind running in with our life’s scribbles or running back to try to rub them out or scribbling more notes about our scribbles — something shifts and there is a withdrawal of energy from that. It’s not aversion. It’s a shift. An energetic shift, an emotional shift, a psychological shift. And it’s the shift that allows conditions that form into something which we normally take ourselves to be, or to have, or to own, or to be held by. There is a shift and these forms are allowed to manifest — and subside. That process is what we call purification. It’s not pouring disinfectant over it. It’s letting things come into their own release. That’s the shift, the stepping back….
“Meditation can be seen as a particular set of skills that you can hone to sharpen your awareness. But it’s not just a one-thing that you do. It’s developing skills that make it so you can cultivate all-around awareness. Developing inquiry, sensing–where is suffering; where is its edge; where is the shadow of it; where is the thing that I shy away from that I don’t see; what is that; how much of it am I creating? Meditation is something that is generally done within a context that allows one to open up.”
***
Like that? There’s more! Listen here.
Not a Gate, Not a Bell
The Tongue Says Loneliness
by Jane Hirshfield
The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,
but does not feel them.
As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,
nor Thursday
reach back to Wednesday
as a mother reaches out for her found child.
As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging
through it.
Not a bell,
but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,
lashing full strength with the first blow from
inside the iron.
Of the Though, Of the Thought, Of the Thought
***
Cat Trauma Update:
I had a visit today from the House-Call Vet and am MUCH relieved. The vet said that most calico cats tend to be bullies and that yes, my calico (Stella) is acting true to form…but that the situation is salvageable. She said I’m doing the right thing by separating them, that the process will take time, that ultimately I’ll need to make some adjustments in terms of extra feeding stations and litter boxes in different parts of the house, but that everything points to a successful and harmonious outcome. (Probably not until the end of the year. But OK, I’m good with that.)
She also said I could call, text, or email her any time. That she would help guide me through the eventual re-introduction (which should not happen until after I get back from the end-of-August retreat, at the earliest). And that she’d be available to work with my house sitter, if needed, while I’m gone. So WHEW!
FYI: If anybody needs a vet that will come to your house, give her a call!
Kim Lynch, DVM, CVA
Vaccinations, Internal Medicine, Acupuncture
Phone: 314-412-5069. Email: [email protected]
Whatever You Do
In preparation for the next “Let’s Talk Dharma” session, which will be on Right Livelihood, I’ve asked those attending to do a little pre-discussion “homework.” Not everyone can come to the group of course, but everyone could benefit from doing the homework! So here it is:
Listen to Jack Kornfield’s talk, “Labor of Love– Right Livelihood”. (57 min) At about 10 minutes before the end of the recording, Jack says: “Let’s sit for a moment,” and it seems like that’s the end…but KEEP LISTENING.
After a minute or so of silence, Jack offers a beautiful, guided reflection:
“Let yourself picture the work that you do…whatever kind of work…even if you’re so-called ‘retired’…picture the way you spend your time. And imagine if where you do that work were really a temple, and your actions were to embody the sacred–that which is holy–in the work you do. How might that be? Or even if you already do it in that way, what might make that really flower?”
***
(Sweet, no?)
After that….keep ON listening…to hear Jack lead the group in some really gorgeous chanting — which you can join in with! And after THAT….at the very, VERY end of the recording, Jack offers this blessing:
“May whatever you do be the practice of your heart. And wherever you are be the place of love and awakening.”
(You wouldn’t want to miss that.)
Click here to listen.
Remedy
Mu Ch’i’s Persimmons
by Gary Snyder
On the back wall down the hall
lit by a side glass door
is the scroll of Mu Ch’i’s great
sumi painting, “persimmons”.
The wind-weights hanging from the
axles hold it still.
The best in the world, I say,
of persimmons.
Perfect statement of emptiness
no other than form
the twig and the stalk still on,
the way they sell them in the
market even now.
The original’s in Kyoto at a
lovely Rinzai temple where they
show it once a year.
This one’s a perfect copy from Benrido
I choose the mounting elements myself
with the advice of the mounter
I hang it every fall.
And now, to these over-ripe persimmons
from Mike and Barbara’s orchard.
Napkin in hand,
I bend over the sink
suck the sweet orange goop
that’s how I like it
gripping a little twig
those painted persimmons
sure cure hunger
(Dogen: “…there is no remedy for
satisfying hunger other than a
painted rice-cake.” November 1242.)